Grassley/Graham memo

[Anonymous]

Amid the intense press coverage of the House memos, very little press coverage can be found about the Senate memo. It was initially released heavily redacted but was returned to the FBI to be made more transparent. Many redactions were removed. The memo is a referral to the FBI/DOJ for criminal investigation of Christopher Steele.

The memo can be found here: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-02-06%20CEG%20LG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20(Unclassified%20Steele%20Referral).pdf

Some highlights: (from the Washington Examiner link below)

-The referral, which was first released in heavily redacted form on Monday, appears to confirm some level of coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in the effort to seek damaging information about then-candidate Trump.
-The unredacted referral does discuss the controversial FISA applications seeking permission to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The House Intel memo stressed that the effort to obtain a warrant to renew the surveillance would not have happened without the Trump dossier, which contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump's ties to Russia, and that DOJ officials knew Steele had an anti-Trump bias but made no mention of that in their effort to renew FISA surveillance on Page.
-the referral said the "application failed to disclose that the identities of Mr. Simpson’s ultimate clients were the Clinton campaign and the DNC.”
-The referral says that though the FBI suspended its relationship with Steele in October 2016 for unauthorized contact with the media, the agency defended his credibility before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court multiple times under the assumption that Steele had told the truth when he said he had not contacted journalists. The Judiciary Committee said that documents and testimony it received showed that Steele provided dossier information to "numerous media organization" before his relationship with the FBI was terminated.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fbi-removes-some-redactions-in-christopher-steele-criminal-referral-regarding-second-trump-russia-dossier/article/2648321

The NYTimes says:

Two leading Senate Republicans released a document late Tuesday that they said bolstered Republican allegations that the Justice Department relied heavily on a politically tainted dossier in seeking permission from a secret federal court to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide.
-
The Senate letter accuses the F.B.I. of relying largely on unverified information produced for the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to convince a federal judge of the need to eavesdrop on Mr. Page as a possible Russian agent.
The letter said the Justice Department’s initial application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on Mr. Page, filed in October 2016 after he had left the Trump campaign, “appears to contain no additional information corroborating the dossier allegations” posed by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who had been working with a research firm paid by the Democrats. That court approved the surveillance for 90 days, and renewed it three times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/politics/trump-democratic-memo-russia.html

[Anonymous]

Shoot the messenger. Ignore the base crime of espionage and treason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shoot the messenger. Ignore the base crime of espionage and treason.

Yep! The GOP is just terrible.

[Anonymous]

This memo seems to be making the exact same flawed arguments that the Nunes memo made, that a.) the dossier was central evidence in getting the FISA warrant and b.) the source and how it was developed wasn't disclosed to the FISA court.

Both of those are already debunked.

Did Grassley and Graham actually read the FISA warrant and associated documentation? Turned out Nunes didn't...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This memo seems to be making the exact same flawed arguments that the Nunes memo made, that a.) the dossier was central evidence in getting the FISA warrant and b.) the source and how it was developed wasn't disclosed to the FISA court.

Both of those are already debunked.

Did Grassley and Graham actually read the FISA warrant and associated documentation? Turned out Nunes didn't...

Yes. Grassley read the FISA warrant. And, the fact that the information presented to FISC was primarily information provided by Steele has not been debunked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This memo seems to be making the exact same flawed arguments that the Nunes memo made, that a.) the dossier was central evidence in getting the FISA warrant and b.) the source and how it was developed wasn't disclosed to the FISA court.

Both of those are already debunked.

Did Grassley and Graham actually read the FISA warrant and associated documentation? Turned out Nunes didn't...

It states at the top of page 2 of the memo that the chairman was provided copies of the FISA documents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This memo seems to be making the exact same flawed arguments that the Nunes memo made, that a.) the dossier was central evidence in getting the FISA warrant and b.) the source and how it was developed wasn't disclosed to the FISA court.

Both of those are already debunked.

Did Grassley and Graham actually read the FISA warrant and associated documentation? Turned out Nunes didn't...

Yes. Grassley read the FISA warrant. And, the fact that the information presented to FISC was primarily information provided by Steele has not been debunked.

Still pretty disturbing that the FBI, in its zeal to continue assisting Hillary to a win, knowingly provided unvetted information her campaign developed (via Steele) to the FISA court in order to spy on her opponent. (And failed to tell the FISA court that the unvetted info originated with Hillary's campaign.)

[Anonymous]

OP here. If the link to the pdf doesn’t work, try this.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-02-06%20CEG%20LG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20(Unclassified%20Steele%20Referral).pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shoot the messenger. Ignore the base crime of espionage and treason.

Yep! The GOP is just terrible.

Ignore the facts. Continue with conspiracy theory.

[Anonymous]

Is the info in the Steele dossier wrong simply because it was compiled by Trump foes?

Ot is anything produced by Trump foes disregarded even if it's true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Still pretty disturbing that the FBI, in its zeal to continue assisting Hillary to a win, knowingly provided unvetted information her campaign developed (via Steele) to the FISA court in order to spy on her opponent. (And failed to tell the FISA court that the unvetted info originated with Hillary's campaign.)

Uh, it was the NY FBI office that forced the issue on the emails that turned out to be less than nothing, coordinated with Giuliani, Erik Prince and others to spread disinformation that changed the poll numbers in the week before the election. If the Steel Dossier was a ploy to ensure Hillary would win, then it failed miserably, no?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the info in the Steele dossier wrong simply because it was compiled by Trump foes?

Ot is anything produced by Trump foes disregarded even if it's true?

We really don’t know the veracity of the information. The main point here is that the FBI presented this to the FISA court without knowing the veracity of the information because, as Comey indicated, because Steele had provided solid information in the past. And, Comey himself referred to this dossier as “salacious and unverified.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Still pretty disturbing that the FBI, in its zeal to continue assisting Hillary to a win, knowingly provided unvetted information her campaign developed (via Steele) to the FISA court in order to spy on her opponent. (And failed to tell the FISA court that the unvetted info originated with Hillary's campaign.)

Uh, it was the NY FBI office that forced the issue on the emails that turned out to be less than nothing, coordinated with Giuliani, Erik Prince and others to spread disinformation that changed the poll numbers in the week before the election. If the Steel Dossier was a ploy to ensure Hillary would win, then it failed miserably, no?

The NY FBI office did not have the pro-Hillary agents that the HQ did. Just because you can point out that there are objective people in a field office does not excuse the behavior of the FBI agents here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If the link to the pdf doesn’t work, try this.

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2018-02-06%20CEG%20LG%20to%20DOJ%20FBI%20(Unclassified%20Steele%20Referral).pdf

Thanks for posting this.

I only got to page four when I saw that Comey called the information "salacious." How then did the FBI go ahead and present salacious information to the FIDA court? That's worse than unvetted!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This memo seems to be making the exact same flawed arguments that the Nunes memo made, that a.) the dossier was central evidence in getting the FISA warrant and b.) the source and how it was developed wasn't disclosed to the FISA court.

Both of those are already debunked.

Did Grassley and Graham actually read the FISA warrant and associated documentation? Turned out Nunes didn't...

Yes. Grassley read the FISA warrant. And, the fact that the information presented to FISC was primarily information provided by Steele has not been debunked.

Still pretty disturbing that the FBI, in its zeal to continue assisting Hillary to a win, knowingly provided unvetted information her campaign developed (via Steele) to the FISA court in order to spy on her opponent. (And failed to tell the FISA court that the unvetted info originated with Hillary's campaign.)

Hillary Clinton's opponent was Carter Page?